Cold Process Soap

This is a very traditional “making from scratch” method of crafting soap. We start by combining high quality oils, fats, and/or butters with lye and distilled water – you can’t make soap without lye.  Then we blend in other ingredients such as colorants (mica and clay) and fragrance (essential oils and fragrance blends. This process causes a chemical reaction called saponification, where the oils/fats/butters are transformed into soap, consuming the lye in the process. There is no lye in the finished product.

Some characteristics of Cold Process include:

  • Pro – Can customize every single ingredient, including oils.
  • Pro – Often made in “loaf molds”, each bar and batch is unique
  • Pro – Because of the trace and consistency, this method can produce more visually creative bars than other methods, and sometimes incorporates fresh ingredients like milk and fruit/vegetable purees. (Think “cake wars!”)
  • Con – Some colors and fragrances can morph in the high pH environment and fade, turn brown, or entirely change over time.
  • Cold process soap takes a minimum of 4 – 6 weeks to cure before it is ready to be used. For pure olive oil soap (castile soap), cure time can be 12 months!